Privacy watchdog slow, soft on telcos
Despite dealing with a significantly lower number of complaints, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) lags far behind its regulatory counterparts in responding to privacy complaints against telecommunications companies, a report has found.
(Clock image by David Goehring, CC2.0)
The Communications Privacy Complaints report conducted by the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales, backed by a grant from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), found that of the 21,000 complaints Australians lodged against the telco industry over privacy violation, the OPC dealt with just 113 of these in 2009.
The study compared this to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), which received 260,000 complaints with over 5000 relating directly to privacy issues; and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which had 16,000 complaints relating to telecommunications in the areas of the Do Not Call Register (12,000 complaints) and spam-related issues (4000 complaints).
The report found that the average turnaround time for the OPC to resolve a complaint was six months, with times ranging from two weeks to 12 months. In contrast, the study highlighted that ACMA's resolution time for complaints from consumers relating to spam or the Do Not Call register was an average of 30 days, while the TIO took just 10 days to resolve most complaints.
In addition to this, the penalties for telco companies found to have breached privacy were found to be much stronger with the ACMA than with the TIO or OPC. The ACMA will name the company involved in cases of serious privacy breaches and will use the complaints for campaigns about law reform and industry practice. The report found that in 2009, ACMA issued eight enforceable undertakings to telcos, seven infringement notices and launched 21 investigations.
However, for consumers seeking compensation for the breaches of privacy, the report stated that the TIO and the OPC were the better options. The TIO rarely had to make a binding decision; most cases were settled between the consumer and the telco, with the company making apologies and paying compensation to the consumer. Similarly, the report stated that the OPC sought the company involved to issue apologies or to correct any errors it had made. The average financial settlement from the OPC ranged between $500 and $2000, but in one instance the consumer received a settlement of $20,000 from the telecommunications company.
One of the report's authors, Chris Connolly, was critical of the OPC's reluctance to name any company found to have breached privacy.
"The complete absence of any high profile or high impact enforcement action by the OPC means that business organisations are under no pressure to comply with privacy laws, or to respond to complaints quickly," Connolly said in a statement.
"It is surprising following such long investigations [that] the OPC seems unwilling to name and shame telecommunications organisations that breach consumers' privacy."
ACCAN chief executive officer Teresa Corbin said that the report highlighted the need for greater consistency in outcomes for consumers complaining to each of the regulatory bodies.
"It shouldn't matter where consumers lodge their complaints, everyone with a serious privacy issue should have access to the same remedies — whether they be an apology, compensation, correction or removal of personal data, a change in individual company's business practices or industry as a whole for systemic issues, she said.
"At the moment there is no clear path for consumers to take and the end result is confusion among consumers and a lack of accountability for the industry."
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner was contacted for comment, but it had not responded at the time of writing.
In July, Timothy Pilgrim was appointed to take over the role of Privacy Commissioner from Karen Curtis. The OPC will become part of the Federal Government's new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner in November.